Mourinho is aiming for his third Champions League title, having won it with Porto and Inter Milan.

But it is his victory with Inter in 2010 that former Manchester City boss Mancini claims credit for.

Mourinho succeeded him as manager at the San Siro in 2008 and Mancini said: “Mourinho won the Champions League because he took a good team.

“He took a team that, like Manchester City, I had built. A team that had a strong mentality.

“When I went to Inter, they played very bad football and we changed that.”

MY FOUNDATIONS: Mancini reckons Mourinho's Champions League glory with Inter was down to him [AFP]

But Mourinho, who criticised the state of the team he inherited from Mancini at the time, dismissed the Italian’s claims.

“It’s funny because in my team in the final in 2010, we had Lucio, Diego Milito, Samuel Eto’o, Goran Pandev and Wesley Sneijder. So of the 11 players, he didn’t work with six of them,” said the Chelsea manager.

“He must have made up a made a five-a-side team because I played with only five of his players in my team.”

Mancini reckons his current Galatasaray team have just a 20 per cent chance of going through against Chelsea.

He said: “Chelsea are a young team, like we are, but they are top of the Premier League because they have good players. That is the reason. They are 80 per cent likely to go through.”

A healthy first-leg lead might improve Mourinho’s mood after a week in which he attacked the “disgraceful” publication of his off-guard comments about Eto’o and his goal-shy strikers.

WINNER: Mourinho claimed his second Champions League crown with Inter Milan in 2010 [GETTY]

Mourinho was angered and embarrassed when what Chelsea insist were “private, jocular and off-the-record” comments he made last week about his strikers at a sponsors launch in Switzerland were broadcast by a French TV network.

He said: “The problem with Chelsea is we lack a scorer. I have one [Eto’o] but he’s 32. Maybe 35, who knows?”

Yesterday, Mourinho was still clearly angry and said: “People should be embarrassed as media professionals. Of course it was not a happy comment, but from the ethical point of view it’s a disgrace.

“I’m not defending what I said. But my comment was obviously not one I would do in a serious way or an official way”

Jose Mourinho

“I’m not defending what I said. But my comment was obviously not one I would do in a serious way or an official way.

“I don’t make fun of anyone, because I’m a manager who defends his players; and because Samuel Eto’o is four times a Champions League winner.

“He has no reason to be upset because also, he told a few years ago, that Mourinho is the only manager in the world who I would never play for, and after one year he was playing with me at Inter and now here.

“There is no story, there is no story. I repeat: it was a funny conversation between me and somebody who doesn’t belong to the football world.

“I really think it’s a disgrace that someone is taping and recording a private conversation when, obviously, we don’t know.”